NOW That’s What I Call A Musical – spandex and solidarity, friendship and forgiveness (Grand Opera House until Saturday 23 November)

NOW That’s What I Call Music compilation tapes began 41 years ago this month. Released two or three times a year, they collected together – ‘curated’ seems too strong a word – the big hits onto cassettes, then CDs, MiniDiscs (all too briefly), and even vinyl. NOW That’s What I Call Music #119 was released last week, bringing together tracks from Chappell Roan, Kylie Minogue, Coldplay, The Weekend, Jordan Adetunji, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Pet Shop Boys Sting, and Snow Patrol. A musical feast.

The cultural phenomenon has now been translated into a jukebox musical, though NOW That’s What I Call A Musical is too classy to feature an actual jukebox and instead uses a Karaoke/DJ to introduce some of the tracks into Pippa Evans’ story.

The show revolves around school friends Gemma and April who were thick as thieves as they stepped out into adulthood in 1989. Twenty years later, Gemma attends her class reunion in the local pub and the memories – and the songs – come flooding back. Gemma was rooted to Birmingham and dreamed of staying there, becoming a nurse, and starting a family. Two out of three ain’t bad as Meat Loaf was prone to sing. We see romance blossom: but life hasn’t all been roses over the two decades. Meanwhile, April wanted to be a Hollywood star, and in pursuit of her dreams, lost touch with Gemma. Will the pair be reunited? Or is it time to realise that time and distance have severed their ‘forever friendship’ permanently?

We flit between 1989 and 2009, with older and younger versions of key cast members (“the same but saggy”). Nikita Johal and Maia Hawkins are full of verve and naivety as school-aged Gemma and April. Nina Wadia and Melissa Jacques play the adult roles. All four have superb voices for their many solos and duets. Jacques’ rendition of Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves is glorious.

Director Craig Revel Horwood is also in charge of the choreography, creating visually interesting routines for the large ensemble who pick up the roles of the minor characters. The knowingly kitsch rendition of Video Killed the Radio Star (a 1979 hit) will be hard to forget. There’s an air of body positivity in the casting – ie, all shapes and sizes are seen to dance and exist – which is abnormal for theatre but a welcome decision.

The show is stuffed full of tracks from the 80s and early 90s. Musical director Georgia Rawlins, along with just four other musicians in the pit, pump out superb covers that drive the whole vibe of the story. Girls Just Want To Have Fun Relax, Tainted Love, Every Breath You Take, I Gonna Be (500 Miles), Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Flashdance…What A Feeling, I'll Stand by You, Gold (Spandau Ballet), Walking on Sunshine, St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion), Relight My Fire, and more.

Some of the most beautiful moments come when recognisable melodies are slowed right down, stripped back, and allowed to linger in a minor key (like Blondie’s Heart of Glass). The all-singing, all-dancing cast have the voices and presence to pull off their own story-specific renditions of the tracks. And it all adds up to something quite special.

Truth be told, you come for the music but end up buying into the story. The reveal at the end of the first act is heart-warming and genuinely emotional. Gemma’s husband Tim (Kieran Cooper with a youthful mullet, and Chris Grahamson in double-breasted jackets) is played as a philandering pantomime villain that the audience know to boo: his character arc is one of downwards motion, and keeps the tone light-hearted despite his coercive and troublesome behaviour.

A dream sequence – used as a device to reset Gemma’s thinking and propel the story to its (for-once) justified megamix conclusion – allows a star from the period to join the cast to sing a number. Some weeks it’s Sinitta, Sonia or Jay Osmond. Fans in the Grand Opera House were beside themselves with excitement when the curtain at the back of the stage opened and T’Pau’s Carol Decker (her name is never mentioned without including the band!) stepped in to sing China in Your Hand. While Decker’s voice has lost some of its strength, she still has the power to control an audience and whip them into a frenzy. People rose to their feet and swayed in the boxes. Most of the stalls raised their arms and waved them. A four-minute concert in the middle of an already musically rich show. (Having some of the industry’s biggest record labels on board must help with the rights to the music.)

Tom Rogers and Toots Butcher designed the set which playfully unfolds to transform the pub (which sells Carol Deckor-i/daiquiri cocktails) into a school, bedrooms and bedsits, a video rental store, and Gemma’s family homes. Ben Cracknell neatly drops down lights and a disco ball to shift some scenes into disco mode.

NOW That’s What I Call A Musical is full of spandex and solidarity, friendship and forgiveness; a toe-tapping musical memorial to the cassette tape that must confuse some of the younger audience members. Performances continue at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 23 November.

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No Other Land – forced displacement captured from inside the West Bank and a friendship that defies stereotypes (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 November)

No Other Land is a haunting film that stayed with me over the four and a half months since I first watched it as part of Docs Ireland at the end of June. Basel’s family have long been documenting life in their West Bank village. Their precarious situation brought with it constant vigilance and activism to protect their home from demolition notices backed by the Israeli Army. When he was old enough, the camera passed to Basel Adra who hot foots it across the area, day or night, to witness and record the latest actions to force his community out of the area.

“I started to film when we began to end.”

When Tony Blair visited the rudimentary primary school that local children attended in 2009, the international attention – from a seven-minute stop – rescinded the threat. No Other Land picks up the story in 2020, when a court confirmed that the area was a military training ground and the dust from army jeeps, trucks and diggers on the road into the group of around twenty villages in Masafer Yatta would signify that another family was going to lose their house that day. Then a man only known as Ilan takes over control of the demolition. Ilan is very aware of the names of those who document the army’s actions.

More homes are torn down. A young friend of Basel’s is shot at close range. Paralysed from the chest down, Harun sleeps with his family in a cave, and is lifted out in an ad hoc stretcher made from a carpet rug to an above-ground tarpaulin tent during the day. The international media give his plight some attention, but nothing changes. His Mum is distraught at his condition and wishes he could be free from pain, even if that meant death.

Nighttime raids are added to daytime ones. Bare-chested men from nearby West Bank settlements come into the area with their faces disguised, carrying guns and clubs. They smash windows threaten the villagers with impunity while the army looks on. At a later date, armed settlers reappear, without any disguises, and shoot dead a young man. We watch Basel’s footage of the moment his cousin is killed. That’s the point that most villagers around Masafer Yatta give up what remains of their homes and land. After decades they leave.

Professional camerawork (Hamdan Balla and Rachel Szor) enhances older family archive and contemporary camcorder footage that Basel collects. A sympathetic Israeli journalist from outside the West Bank visits regularly. Yuval Abraham can travel through the checkpoints – his number plate is the right colour (yellow, not green) – and he becomes a close confidant of Basel. His impressions and the pair’s friendship and friction form one of the most important threads through the film. Yuval is mostly accepted into the community, albeit with moments of intolerance and tension. He is frustrated that his online storytelling about the destruction doesn’t get more traction. Basel cautions his “[enthusiasm] like you want to end occupation in 10 days” and says “you have to be patient” … Basel’s family have been living through this for decades. (Yuval is the fourth producer of the film alongside Basel, Hamdan and Rachel.)

The sight of families carrying bedding and white goods out of their homes in the moments before watching diggers knock over the walls is distressing. While there’s no version of these events that is going to be calm and peaceful, the terror is exacerbated by the animosity and foul language of the soldiers. The scenes bring back memories of people forced out of their homes in Northern Ireland: except the local form of a demolition notice would be graffiti on your wall or a knock on the door with a threat, and someone else would usually move into your home. But has the state stood by at times and cast a blind eye to intimidation?

The sight of children calmly gathering together their classroom resources and carrying them outside when the bulldozers arrive has no local parallels. Watching concrete being poured from a cement mixer into a local well to cut off the fresh water supply is a robust measure and totally inhumane. Seeing Ilan gleefully taking a chainsaw to the water pipework to put it beyond re-use emphasises the hatred behind the operation.

Having reached 2023, the film finishes with a pensive Yuval dreaming of a world where Basel will be free to come to visit him. Basel is not convinced. Harun dies. Official papers reveal that the heightened campaign of forced displacement was “to stop Arab villages expanding”. Soon after the documentary is edited and begins touring around festivals, the conflict in Gaza escalates: tensions and attacks rise in the West Bank.

No Other Land returns to the Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 November. It’s an excellent companion piece to the fictionalised The Teacher, and is all the more potent because it is real.

 

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The Other Way Around – a couple’s attempt to celebrate ending well (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Belfast Film Festival certainly had its fair share of surreal and absurd movies this year. The final screening I attended was Spanish director Jonás Trueba’s The Other Way Round.

An actor and a director have decided to part company after 14 years together. The decision is amicable. There’s no stated cause. And they want to end well. In fact, inspired by her father’s view that separation should be celebrated with a party, they talk themselves into organising a shindig to which they’ll invite their friends and maybe even their families to mark this pivotal moment in their lives.

In the home full of Billy bookcases, there are scenes of sorting through and boxing up books and CDs as the couple split their possessions. One may stay in their apartment while the other rents a small flat: a decision-making process that becomes another point of stress that must be overcome. Splitting up is also the theme of the dialogue in a self-tape audition that Alex asks Ale to film.

“I’ve always though it’s a good idea for a film … but in real life I don’t know.”

Itsaso Arana plays the Ale, a director who is in the final stages of editing her new film. The Other Way Round becomes quite meta with husband Alex (Vito Sanz) the lead actor, and his scenes – and the aspects of the storyline we see – impossible to distinguish from real life events.

Ale is examining the process of breaking up from both sides of the lens. The film-within-a-film device works to the film’s advantage, allowing lots of on-screen commentary about whether the narrative is linear or circular, and creating the opportunity for some fun editing techniques to play with the storytelling. Ale’s father also places a copy of Søren Kierkegaard book Repetition into the hands of his daughter. The concepts of recollection and repetition and reconnecting were already frequent responses from the couple’s friends upon being informed about their breakup: “sure you’ll soon be back together”.

The Other Way Round is a sweet and thoughtful consideration of separation. Ending well and doing so in an attitude of grace and amicability seems rare but is surely a worthy ambition. Oddly, the film is never moving, and doesn’t even seem to attempt to elicit that kind of reaction. There’s an irritating sense of inevitability about the conclusion. Yet the credits will keep you glued to your seat as you watch the montage of faces at the party, people that have been incredibly important to Ale and Alex over the years.

Screened in Queen’s Film Theatre as part of the 2024 Belfast Film Festival.

 

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Calamity Jane – mistaken identity, impersonation, guns, hats and a stagecoach full of whip-crack-away songs (St Agnes’ Choral Society at Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 November)

St Agnes’ Choral Society are performing the musical Calamity Jane all week in the Grand Opera House. The story was made famous by the 1953 film starring Doris Day, and eight years later (the chorale society was in its third year) it was adapted into a stage musical.

Saloon owner Henry Miller is trying to patch up relations with his rowdy clientele in a goldrush town. Sure hasn’t everyone booked a Frances only for a Francis to turn up?! So Calamity Jane – prone to a spot of exaggeration – promises that she’ll go to Chicago and bring back the pin-up performer Adelaide Adams to perform. But true to her nickname, Calamity returns with an actress who isn’t quite the real deal. However, in a town full of people who are searching for something they haven’t yet got (gold and riches), Katie Brown gets a second chance … until she captures the heart of the man her new best friend Calamity has her heart set on. What a calamity!

Musical director Andrew Robinson’s fine band of fifteen down in the pit have the audience clapping along with the overture that previews many of the show’s most important melodies. Then it’s straight into the Golden Garter saloon, complete with over-excitable owner Henry Miller (played by Kevin McReynolds), ten-gallon hats and dancing in gingham dresses. The Deadwood stagecoach rolls in – a marvellous feat of set building – and the show is underway. The ensemble choreography (designed by Amy Blackshaw) during Windy City impresses. Aideen Fox delivers a (deliberately) wonderfully out-of-tune and clumsy rendition of Keep It Under Your Hat pretending to be Adelaide Adams before reprising with confidence and style as Katie Brown. Gappy opening night timing slows down some scenes, particularly entrances, but that will tighten up as the week of performances bed in.

Despite being full of hummable tunes (Windy City, The Black Hills of Dakota, Secret Love), Calamity Jane isn’t often performed by amateur dramatic or chorale societies. (From the extensive list of St Agnes’ productions at the back of the programme, this seems like their first tilt at it in 67 years.) Like most musicals from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, it retains dated sensibilities. Native Americans are frequently referred to as “savages” who are shot on sight and whose death toll is celebrated. One line of non-ironic dialogue remarks: “no wonder them lnjuns fight so fierce-t'hang onto this country”. There’s also a very male lens, played for laughs but really just downright misogyny, with Calamity ridiculed for bring rugged and handy with a gun, but also scolded for being hysterical and “thinking like a woman”. Shows from the past can still speak to the present, asking how much has really changed. Pleasingly, last night’s Belfast audience noticed and tut tutted at some of the examples of sexism in the story!

The shorter second act contains the best songs. Leaving aside any misgivings over the sentiment, A Woman’s Touch is very enjoyable and Calamity (played brilliantly by Lorraine Jackson) still retains recognisable ‘tomboy’ mannerisms despite her transformation from hunting skins to a flattering dress. (The cabin set’s built-in surprises could be given more prominence.) While Jackson goes through a lot of wigs and costumes, she never loses the essence of what makes her character a force of nature, and her delivery of lines and lyrics is exemplary. Gareth McGreevy’s vocals as Lieutenant Danny are great, and Wild Bill’s voice is a revelation when swaggering Kyle Emerson switches from speaking to singing. The male ensemble doesn’t quite have the strength or sweetness of the female vocalists: perhaps a focus for future recruitment to boost the tenors and basses.

If the script was a stagecoach, there’d be a cloud of dust as the plot makes a handbrake turn and Calamity and Bill declare their real feelings for each other. The fighting-to-friendship switcheroo could do with a bit more obvious foreshadowing over the previous hour or more, but the powerful rendition of Secret Love makes up for the rush towards the final wedding extravaganza.

Director Laura Kerr has an abundance of acting and singing talent amongst the principal cast members, and a total company of more than 60 to manage. The stage is filled with the faces of cast members who exude such joy at being able to perform and entertain. They’re having a ball, and the Grand Opera House audience seemed to lap up the talent on display.

St Agnes’ Choral Society’s production of Calamity Jane continues in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 November. You can also catch the society up at the Queen’s Film Theatre singing carols before the screening of White Christmas on the afternoon of Saturday 14 December. And they’re back in the Grand Opera House in March along with Belfast Operatic Company, Ulster Operatic Company and the Grand Opera House Trust with the UK amateur première of Les Misérables, the first of 11 multi-company amateur theatre productions being staged across the UK to mark the musical’s 40th anniversary. (Because the musical is still running in the West End and professionally touring the UK, only school/youth productions are normally licensed.)

Photo credit: Nicola McKee

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Nightbitch – exhausted mum by day, cuddly dog killing other animals and burying them in the garden by night (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Amy Adams plays a mum who stays at home to rear her toddler while her husband (Scoot McNairy) travels far and wide with his work. Hearing Mum’s inner monologue builds empathy. Recognising the heaven-twinned-with-hell nature of the weekly Book Babies meetup only consolidates our understanding of her frustration at managing the wee lad all on her own.

The first sign of something odd is the way dogs are playfully attracted to her when she’s out in the park. The title Nightbitch (taken from Rachel Yoder’s novel) sums up the magic realism* element of the movie. In the evenings, the longest part of any parent’s day, Mum intermittently turns into a dog and will slip out the front door and go for a trot around the neighbourhood, killing other animals, digging holes in the garden. The soil under her fingernails and the mess she makes in the shower are hard to explain to her husband. *It’s firmly in the magic realism and stops well short of proper body horror, shying away from the gruesome end of her nocturnal activities, yet still ends up with an R rating in the US!

Twin boys Arleigh and Emmett Snowden play the part of the toddler, with gorgeous naturalistic footage of them playing with Adams. Norma the librarian who makes special book recommendations adds older wisdom (and yet more mystery) to the story, a beautiful performance by Jessica Harper.

Nightbitch is a tad confusing. Permission to just get on with believing that Mum can become a dog at night is never quite implicitly granted by director Marielle Heller, so for considerable parts of the film I found myself waiting for a giant metaphor to be revealed. Instead, the takeaways seem as simple as parenting isn’t easy, parenting on your own is really hard work and changes your whole sense of self even more than how other people perceive you … oh, and men are simply insensitive, inconsiderate, and very self-absorbed. A filmmaker doesn’t really need 98 minutes of screentime to rehearse those concepts. Yet there is much to enjoy.

The cat skeletons are visually inventive, along with lots of biting asides and commentary: “What happened to my wife? / (whispered) She died in childbirth.”

While Nightbitch looks at motherhood from a perspective of what it can force someone to give up, the more interesting lesson would perhaps be to talk about what doesn’t have to be given up if others step up to provide support. Screened in the QFT as part of Belfast Film Festival, there’s a good chance that Nightbitch may reappear in one or more local cinemas in December or January.

 

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Conclave – “certainty is the great enemy of unity; certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance” (UK cinemas from Friday 29 November)

Conclave is likely to be in my top three films of the year. While it’s a great translation from page to screen of Robert Harris’ novel, it also has much to say to contemporary events and ecclesiastical leadership.

The Catholic Pope has died. The Dean of the College of Cardinals – Thomas Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) – must organise and manage the conclave that will elect the new pontiff. The cardinals gather, including one unexpected appointment known only to the previous Pope. (In real life, canon law wouldn’t allow an in pectore appointment to take part in the conclave … but that would spoil a good story.) Sequestered from the outside world, they will vote several times a day (up to four) until one candidate receives a two-thirds majority. (There’s more to the rules, but that’s the gist.)

The media quickly speculate about the runners and riders. There’s the black African Joshua Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) who some see as progressive while others label as homophobic. Blowing in like a blast of stale air from Venice comes Goffredo Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) who would reverse recent modernisations and return to the days of the Latin Mass. Canadian Jacob Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) does little to hide his keenness to take the top job (I mean, become the servant of the church) but his ambition could be a double-edged sword. There’s the liberal Aldo Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) who was close to the former pontiff and a favourite of the Curia. Ostensibly he’s utterly reluctant to be seen to want the role, but he also points out that every cardinal harbours the possibility somewhere in their heart. The wild card is newcomer Vincent Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) who has been ministering in conflict zones, most recently in Kabul.

While great effort has been made to cut the cardinals off from outside influence, the world still makes itself heard inside the Sistine Chapel in Peter Straughan’s screenplay (and Harris’ original novel). Some of the leading candidates are damaged by revelations about their past and present actions: with one falling on his sword having been found guilty of protecting his position over taking responsibility for others. Some of the dead pope’s turtles escape their pond. Many cigarettes are smoked. Many conversations are convened in stairwells and darkened rooms. While the decision-making cardinals are male, the story provides opportunity for women’s voices to be heard and their influence to be brought to bear on the conclave.

Ralph Fiennes portrays gravitas, cunning and a worry-worn brow as his character skilfully navigates his fellow cardinals around the potholes that he becomes aware of. (Expect to see his name in Academy Award nominations in January.) In his homily on the eve of the conclave beginning, Cardinal Lawrence remarks that “certainty is the great enemy of unity; certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance”. I’m in no doubt that these phrases will dominate sermons from pulpits of all persuasions in weeks to come, with some ceasing on its apt challenge in times of binary right and wrong, and others suggesting that Christianity is misunderstood if faith is seen as belief amid uncertainty.

Conclave was released to American cinemas ten days before the US Presidential Election. The film’s characters have much to say about leadership and service, and ideologies that exclude, repress or isolate.

Its UK release at the end of November is likely to hit an Anglican Communion that will still be in turmoil. Cardinal Lawrence’s homily went on to hope that “God sends us a pope who sins, asks for forgiveness, and carries on”. Those words turn out to be both succour and a challenge within the world of the film, never mind in the real world.

In terms of leadership being suited to the reluctant rather than the overly keen, the words of Matthew 20:16 echo unsaid throughout much of the two-hour film: “the last will be first, and the first will be last”.

Having touched on the church hierarchy’s attitude towards women at several points in the film – not least through the work and witness of the nuns serving food to the sequestered cardinals – the story’s final twist examines another uncommon aspect of identity (one that is not so rare that it hasn’t pastorally been dealt with poorly in some congregations on this island).

For some, the finale will spoil what has been a thought-provoking story. For others, the finale will pleasingly allow Cardinal Lawrence to stop managing and begin leading, confident that identity in Christ (“I am what God made me”) and wholeness – all the previous talk of unity finally culminates in the man who prayed for both men and women in his mealtime grace – matters more than identity in society. It’ll certainly get tongues wagging in cinema car parks.

Conclave isn’t the deepest, most philosophical film that will be released in 2024. However, for once it uses faith – and in this case the closed doors ritual of electing a new Catholic pope – to shine light on how human beings inevitably organise themselves into hierarchies. It’s definitely not the most accurate portrayal of what happens at a conclave. The real college of cardinals may turn out to be gentile bunch, full of prayer, and incapable of forming schisms or factional groupings. But if they’re human, there’s at least a germ of truth about the potential manoeuvring and politicking even if the issues at play are less likely to be classified as ‘woke’.

Other than a handful of preview screenings, expect to see Conclave hitting UK cinemas on Friday 29 November.

 

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King Baby – an allegory about the morally corrupting effect of being in or serving power (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Two men find themselves along in the ruin of an old castle. Sustained by a seemingly endless supply of powder in which to make jelly for dinner, they live out their days as a King and a servant in the French country idyl. The creation of a queen – a mannequin fashioned from a felled tree – introduces company and conflict to the daily rituals of bathing, hunting the rabbit, speechifying and getting ready for bed.

In King Baby, Graham Dickson plays the sneering monarch, an outright bully who belittles his sole human companion. Neil Chinneck is the servant, offering an alternative, more thoughtful outlook on how to live well in the isolated situation. The servant attempts with varying degrees of success to put words into the king’s mouth, and ultimately rebalances the power imbalance to put manners on the king. Yet in doing so, he sacrifices his virtue and becomes as haunted as the original king.

While at first you might hope that the servant will tame the king and the two can live in codependent companionship, this 88-minute allegory about holding power and serving power ultimately concludes that balance isn’t possible. Written and directed by Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing, the homoerotic finale depicts the morally corrupting effect of the patriarchy.

King Baby was developed as a play before morphing into a film. It’s a great modern fairytale and well worth catching if it gets a cinematic release after touring festivals. It was recently screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre as part of Belfast Film Festival.

 

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Chicken – feathery fantasy with a cocky critique of the acting profession (Belfast International Arts Festival at Lyric Theatre until Sunday 10 November) #BIAF24

While the show begins with a wordless Bouffon-style entrance – fluffy chest puffed out, head nodding, pecking at the audience – Chicken soon switches to a surreal story of a Kerry cock (who is “a proud Irishman”) with thespian ambitions.

Physically hunched over with bent knees for the whole 50-minute performance, Eva O’Connor draws the audience into the cockerel’s world. We grow comfortable with the normality of chickens interacting with humans as peers. Sure wasn’t Buzby able to make and receive telephone calls, so why not chickens?!

From an obscure start as a feathery Christ-child in the school nativity, Don Murphy – the Kerry cock in question – is soon on a feature film set, starring in scenes with Michael Fassbender’s pecker (don’t worry, it’s all very dignified) before sniffing one too many lines of ketamine in New York, falling apart at the Academy Awards, facing up to a performative chicken vagina (not quite so dignified, but still very funny) and returning to Kerry to work on Martin McDonagh’s remake of Chicken Run.

Away from the chicken capers, the performance is also a critique of the puffed-up film industry, full of consideration of body image, the abuse of power, casting couch #MeToo moments, snorting your way to stardom, not to mention the British tendency to appropriate any Irish on-screen success.

Sitting in the round – just 72 seats are arranged around the four sides of the square stage – O’Connor struts around in circles for the whole performance. It’s intimate but never intimidating, though part of the joy is being able to watch the reaction of audience members sitting opposite you to the most surprising moments in the story.

The script is gently puntastic, and a range of accents and mannerisms allow O’Connor to morph into Pablo the Glaswegian pigeon living in the Big Apple, and ‘Hairy Arms’ (Don’s agent) amongst many other characters.

With a relatively short runtime, Chicken doesn’t try to overegg its pudding. At times, the sheer mix of ingredients threatens to scramble the story, pulling the audience’s thinking in all sorts of directions, including some commentary on animal rights and the poultry industry. But overall, the allegorical absurdity is a success, and we stand in awe of O’Connor’s craft and Hildegard Ryan’s writing and direction. Chicken finishes its run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 10 November. And the Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 26 November.

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Rumours – close encounters of a head of state and mummified kind (Belfast Film Festival) #BFF24

A G7 Summit is being held in Germany at a remote country house. Its theme is ‘regret’. In Evan Johnson’s Rumours (Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin also directed) we join the leaders as they gather for dinner in an outdoor gazebo away from the distractions of aides and advisors. They break into small groups to brainstorm their ideas for a statement they need to write and issue in reaction to an unspecified “present crisis”. Something ecological or environmental, but so severe that it shall not be named.

The German Chancellor (played by Cate Blanchett) is in charge of herding the head of state cats. The Japanese PM regurgitates an MBA textbook of buzzwords. The French President (Denis Ménochet) wants a vague statement that placates rather than holds them to any action. The aging US President (Charles Dance) watches his colleagues through binoculars and soon dozes off. The suave Canadian PM (Roy Dupuis) has a history of bedroom diplomacy: the British Prime Minister (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is delicately managing relations with him after their closer and steamier interactions at the previous summit. His eyes and hands will soon wander a different direction. The Italian PM (Rolando Ravello) isn’t long in post and starts out as a ‘Yes man’, perhaps the most naïve yet ultimately the most practical of the seven. And one figure is missing. The President of the European Commission (Zlatko Burić) traditionally attends the G7 summit but is nowhere to be seen as dinner begins.

The characters come to life and demonstrate the kind of stereotyped misbehaviour that you’d both expect and enjoy. There are instances of mansplaining, casual prejudice to other nations, tote bags (complete with a particular pill) to help the leaders survive the summit, much lauding of the Maastricht Treaty, and a lot of the lights being on but nobody being at home. The rural estate is also the scene of an archaeological dig that has recently disturbed human remains that had been preserved in the boggy ground. The scientist speculates that the body may be that of a community leader. A portent of what may be to come.

It’s the discovery of a giant brain (“the size of a hatchback” car) by a wandering leader and the awakening of another set of figures that veers Rumours towards but never quite fully into the vicinity of a Zombie movie. Throw in an Artificial Intelligence engine that is not convinced of the value of the leaders, and you have a black comedy whose plot is flimsy but whose action is soon farcical.

The appearance of Enya’s Exile in the soundtrack lifts the mood of one scene, and the cut and paste statement that is finally delivered by the French President nicely rounds of the movie.

Rumours was playfully programmed on the night of the US Presidential election count as part of the Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 9 November.

 

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Second Chance – a high altitude tale of hope and kindness from filmmaker Subhadra Mahajan (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Second Chance is a beautiful slow hug of a film.

After a pregnancy scare and being ghosted by her boyfriend, 25-year-old Nia (Dheera Johnson) takes some time out and heads up to a village in the snowy heights of the Himalayas. Mobile coverage is patchy, the weather is extreme, but she’s close to nature and enjoys the different pace of life. But she’s not alone. As well as cooking and cleaning and spinning wool to earn extra money, the cabin’s housekeeper Bhemi (Thakra Devi) is responsible for a boisterous and Superman-obsessed grandson Sunny (Kanav Thakur).

The setting is suited to the black and white cinematography, and the coolness of the climate is soon in sharp contrast to the sense of understanding and gratitude that develops between Nia, Bhemi and Sunny. Into the mix comes an ex-boyfriend and his wife who provide (on balance) more comfort than regret. There’s also unexpected companionship courtesy of a beautiful kitten (Supercat played by Yuki).

While parents worry about Nia’s life mission to curate blends of tea, or create vegan nightwear, there are more pressing matters to be resolved. The healing trajectory of Nia’s sojourn in the hills is interrupted by further heartache in scenes that gently explore her choice in contrast with the tragic experience of Bhemi’s daughter/Sunny’s mum.

Indian writer/director Subhadra Mahajan crafts a gentle tale that is imbued with hope, kindness and a stern resolve to make good decisions rather than be pulled along by other people’s wishes. Hopefully this film will make its way into the QFT programme in months to come to give Belfast cinemagoers a Second Chance to enjoy it.

Belfast Film Festival continues until Saturday 9 November.

 

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Dead Man’s Money – where there’s a will there’s room for fear, uncertainty and doubt (Belfast Film Festival) #bff24

Screened as part of the 2024 Belfast Film Festival, Paul Kennedy’s new film Dead Man’s Money shows a lot of promise with great casting and some interestingly-constructed characters set loose in a close-knit community as a couple try to tie down their long-term financial security.

A childless couple run the local pub. The husband also puts a lot of work into a local farm. Both are owned by his uncle who has become flaky and workshy in recent weeks. Pauline fears that Young Henry might be labouring in vain if he doesn’t stand to inherit the farm and the pub from Old Henry. Maybe they should ask? Then the reason for Old Henry’s distraction is revealed: he’s spending a lot of quality time with Maureen Tweed, a woman from the village who has been thrice widowed. Will she obstruct Young Henry’s entitlement?

Judith Roddy and Ciarán McMenamin make a fun rural couple. Both Pauline and Young Henry are hard-working, but it’s Pauline who is the more hard-nosed and directly-spoken of the two. For a while – not least because of an opening quote, and the five act structure – it feels like they’ve been written as Lady Macbeth and the Thane of Cawdor … but that notion feels like it is stretched quite thin as the plot develops. While Roddy is fierce and can be brutally heartless, she still keeps a twinkle in Pauline’s eye and there’s a playfulness between the pair when spirits are up.

For a long time, Pat Shortt gives little away as Old Henry. In later scenes, he becomes more forthright, squaring up to the pressure coming from a Young Henry who has finally grabbed the inheritance bull by the horns. While Pauling and Young Henry fear Maureen – known as ‘Widow Tweed’ behind her back – Kathy Kiera Clarke plays her as an non-threatening woman who is quite unperturbed by the couple’s lack of manners. Into the mix comes Gerry the Wheels (Gerard Jordan), a henchman who sings rebel songs in his car, a republican with a paramilitary past and a violent future if you cross his palm with silver. He’s not the subtlest of characters, but serves the plot well. Watch out for the fine musical cameo by Mollie McGinn and Orláith Forsythe (Dea Matrona).

Ultimately, Dead Man’s Money suffers a bit of a slow puncture in the third act. There’s a very suspect bent-over-the-pool-table bonk scene that would have been better cut even shorter and solely played for laughs. Some non-emergency LED lighting remains on even though the pub is in the middle of a power cut. And having established that Pauline and Young Henry run Old Henry’s pub between them, when they disappear off to another room on one of the busiest nights of the year, the audience spend twenty minutes worrying about the mayhem in the main bar behind them. To make matters worse, their absence is on the mind of Gerry who seeks them out to say that there’s no one behind the bar and the punters are thirsty. Any sense of reality is lost, and there’s a heavy reliance on suspending disbelief. A couple of shots of a young lad from the village helping pull pints could have made this last annoyance go away.

Split into chapters, and full of scenes that separate pairs of characters away from the rest, Dead Man’s Money feels like a stage play that has been beautifully shot on film. It’s a fun 82-minute watch, but for me, the dark tragicomedy storyline is let down by its dramaturgy and believability (even in the rarefied world that has been constructed).

Belfast Film Festival runs until Saturday 9 November.

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Blitz – Steve McQueen pulls at the less well explored threads of wartime London (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November)

Blitz is on a similar scale to war films like Dunkirk. Its sets are huge, stuffed full of extras and moving machinery. CGI allow the camera to rise above London to see the scale of destruction from the German bombing raids. Yet at its heart, Blitz is the story of a single mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her son George (Elliott Heffernan) during a couple of days in 1940.

The script could have been predictable. Plucky Londoners taking shelter and pulling together when the bombs decimate their homes and families. Yet writer/director Steve McQueen hasn’t settled for simple remembrance and jingoism. He instead pulls at the threads of the well-understood period of wartime history and highlights how Londoners didn’t have adequate access to safe air raid shelters: tube stations were meant to be off limits. How racism was rife, seen through George’s experience as a biracial child who never knew his deported father. How social justice was misinterpreted as communism: “Maybe Jesus was a red?” McQueen also shines a light on the looting of the shops and corpses: one person’s tragedy is always someone else’s opportunity.

“Please Mum, don’t send me away” is not just the cry of a child not wanting to step into the unknown of being evacuated. It’s the cry of a child who is already bullied for being different. The cry of a child who has precious few friends and feels safer at home under the threat of aerial bombardment than sent across England to spend the next few months and maybe longer with strangers. George doesn’t stay evacuated for long, and much of the film follows his intrepid journey back to find the family home.

In a world where everything is fragile, finding who can be trusted is difficult. But the story includes moments of great humanity. An air raid warden called Ife shows great kindness to young George, and over the course of a few precious hours treats him like a son. Their bond is beautiful, and cruelly short-lived.

George is a scrapper. Rita is a survivor. Young Hefferman makes his professional debut in this film and thrives on portraying loveable, nippy on his feet (he’ll go on to be an adult actor doing his own stunts!), quick thinking, and strong. Other than some great musical numbers that show off her voice, the screenplay doesn’t give Ronan much opportunity to diverge from a mix of stoicism and fear. Paul Weller – yes, that Paul Weller – completes the household, playing Rita’s dad. Like every film I’ve watched this week, there’s an animal in it with a sense of purpose and a strong presence. This time it’s Ollie the cat (played by Zinger and Tinkerbell) who certainly knows how to occupy a bed.

Music plays a big role in Blitz. Jazz is how Rita met George’s father. And it’s the scene of an extraordinary transition as the brash music and dancing fall silent and Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack picks up the melody of Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh! in a minor key. And in a rare red herring in an otherwise well-constructed two-hour film, a grand piano hangs overhead Chekhov-style in one scene, but we’re never granted the satisfaction of hearing it fall to the ground.

Blitz is a film that concentrates on the little people, those on the margins of society, and those who were already high up in the loss stakes before bombs destroyed their homes and communities. In many ways it is low key, but that’s a strength. The film will soon appear on Apple TV+ on Friday 22 November. But given the scale of the ambitious production, it’s well worth viewing Blitz on the big screen with the benefit of a proper surround sound system at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November.

 

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Fréwaka – a Irish folk horror movie that is a gem of Irish filmmaking … at Belfast Film Festival #BFF24

This year’s Belfast Film Festival opened on Thursday evening with a gala screening of Aislinn Clark’s Fréwaka.

It’s set on the Cooley Peninsula in rural County Louth. A live-in home help Shoo (played by Clare Monnelly) is dispatched to look after an older woman Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who resides alone. Or is she alone? Is she being tormented by the souls living in the home she believes is buried under her house? She’s certainly superstitious to the point of paranoia. And what’s with the wee fella from the village with the stern looking billy goat? (It’s as if every movie at this year’s festival has a prominent animal. Check out Universal Language’s gobbling turkeys.)

This is an Irish horror film, and one of the questions at the forefront of my mind at the premiere was whether the geography and the language mattered. And the clear answer was yes. In so many ways. Visually there’s a strong connection with the earth, rooted in the trees and fauna. The tradition of wakes is prominent, along with poring over death notices in newspapers. There are Mummers! But there’s also a sense of intergenerational grief and inherited trauma. Of not dealing with the past – being mentally and perhaps even physically haunted by it – and storing up problems for the future. The use of Irish language also roots the drama in a close-knit community. As an English-speaking audience member, it gave the characters a sense of being on the same wavelength, of sharing history and culture … and baggage. There are smatterings of English and even some Ukrainian exchanged too between Shoo and her girlfriend Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya).

I normally avoid horror films. For me, there’s no sense sitting through something that leaves your stomach in knots. For lots of other people, they experience that as entertainment. Give me a thran Icelandic tale of sheep or motherhood instead ... though even that country’s film output can turn towards horror!

But if I’d followed my instinct, I’d have missed out on a gem of an example of top-quality Irish filmmaking. There are some great performances from the lead characters: Mila brilliantly needles Shoo into confronting her grief with Bystrzhitskaya showing concern short of nagging, while the constant tussle between Peig and Shoo keeps shifting the balance of power and sanity between the pair.

Narayan Van Maele makes the landscape lush and captures the desolate state of the decaying house. The editing is superb (John Murphy) allowing so many aspects of the emerging story to be heard before being seen. Flitting between timelines is done with a confidence that an intelligent audience will follow what’s happening without needing extraneous clues. And the soundtrack. Oh the clamouring soundscape that Die Hexan has produced is glorious. In long word-less stretches, the music becomes dialogue, loud, multi-layered, with distressed instruments not confined to the string section. Clarke’s screenplay neatly flips the carer/cared-for relationship on its head as the sense of co-dependency rises towards the film’s climax. (The foley team should take a special bow for the squelchy scene with the deadly door handle!)

Fréwaka was a very creepy start to what promises to be a fabulous festival. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Aislinn Clarke’s creation comes back to local cinemas to delight larger non-squeamish audiences who adore folk horror. Belfast Film Festival runs until Saturday 9 November.

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The Vanishing Elephant (Cahoots NI in Grand Opera House until Saturday 2 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF24

The Vanishing Elephant stems from Cahoots NI’s director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney being told about Harry Houdini making an elephant disappear on a New York stage back in 1918. He began to wonder about the life of that Asian Elephant, the circumstances of its birth in Bengal, the human contact it would have had – good and bad – to end up on stage in north America. Frequent Cahoots NI collaborator Charles Way has written a screenplay that crosses continents and cultures, with Aoife Kavanagh and Pallavi MD creating a soundtrack and musical numbers which summon up two sides of the globe.

And so the story of a young boy Opu (played by Adi Chugh) and the elephant Janu (a series of beautiful puppets designed by Helen Foan) was formed. Caroline Mirfin dresses the cast of nine of grey costumes that help them disappear inside the puppets and slip through the porous back wall of the set.

The friendship between boy and elephant is contrasted with a series of adults who – to a greater or lesser extent – exploit and mistreat the animal. The Vanishing Elephant never shies away from pointing out cruelty towards animals and avoids glamorising animals performing in circus settings. As the Elephas maximus ends its long and dark ocean journey, the “Welcome to America, the land of the free” greeting clearly doesn’t apply to grey mammals.

For me, Houdini’s titular trick of making an elephant disappear was secondary to a moment a few minutes before when tears welled in my eyes as the elephant met someone special after a very long time apart. That the elephant is a huge puppet, with somewhere between two and six cast members controlling it depending on its configuration did not seem to matter. The scene had tremendous power in the second half of the production because the emotional connection was established and seeded so successfully in the first act. The company of creatives at Cahoots NI don’t just do magic and olde worlde Victoriana charm. They control exert control over every aspect of the theatre environment to manufacture mood and lift audiences out of their seats and into the time and the world of the story.

The pace is unrushed over the 100-minute performance (including interval). The soundtrack impresses and Philippa O’Hara adds vital live vocals. Cahoots NI premiered this show in New York last year and the international cast features Indian performers who bring a particular authenticity to the eastern leg of the story in the first act. The props and puppets have a grand scale the suits the proportions of the large Belfast stage. Iris Schmid shows outstanding control as the puppeteer most often animating the elephant’s trunk. The tableau with Janu balancing on top of a ball is fun, while the choreography to pick the circus ringmaster (played by Maeve Smyth) up into the air with Janu’s trunk is very rewarding.

While a gently grunting three-month-old baby in the seat next to me was more interested in his feed of milk, older children in the rows around seemed transfixed by the gentle storytelling throughout. The themes of friendship and trust are universal as is the depiction of forced displacement. A passing gag about some sections of society being “invisible” was picked up by the adults.

The Vanishing Elephant finishes its run at the Grand Opera House as part of Belfast international Arts Festival with two final performances on Saturday 2 November. The festival continues until 26 November.  Cahoots NI will return later in the year with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in their Cityside Shopping Centre base from Saturday 7–Tuesday 24 December.

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